The 7 Layer System: to be continued...
When I composed yesterday's blog, I was focused primarily on the issue of implementing the Interface of the target object in the UI element that edits that object. In my head I was calling it the User Interface Interface pattern, or UI^2. The 7 layers in the system are: UI, FACTORY/FACADE, Security, Data Object, Data Rules, Data Access, and Data Store.
After the quantity and quality of comments that I received on that blog, I have completely shifted focus to the idea of separating Business Rules from Business Objects. I had written no actual code for yesterday's blog--I was simply sandboxing. I took the time tonight to create a VB 2005 solution with all the major working parts. It's still in the rough draft phase, so I haven't fully separated all my tiers yet. I'm going to take some time and do some refactoring of my code based on some of the comments I received, as well as some new ideas I've been thinking about. Then I'm going to get some web space and post my working solution with each successive blog on this subject.
Design patterns are fascinating.